Mark Rylance Tries a Comic Turn in ‘Farinelli and the King’

LONDON — It’s scarcely news at this point that Mark Rylance, a three-time winner of Broadway’s Tony Award, is a protean talent at home on multiple fronts. But not until his latest stage appearance in “Farinelli and the King,” at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse through March 8, had I clocked just how casually, offhandedly funny this most seasoned of classical actors can be. Let’s just say I don’t know too many others who could bring down the house with the single Spanish word, “Olé!”

Why the continental seasoning? Mr. Rylance has brought his distinctive mixture of insouciance and intelligence to the part of the Spanish king Philip V, or Philippe V as the program for the play refers to the character — an acknowledgment, presumably, of the fact that his grandfather was the French monarch, Louis XIV. Claire van Kampen’s play — her first as a writer after many years distinguishing herself as a composer — couples elements of Alan Bennett’s “The Madness of George III” and Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” in its depiction of a royal mind in decline that takes a refuge of sorts in the music-making of the celebrated Italian castrato, Farinelli.

When the realities of life — or the indignities of illness — become too much to bear, the Spanish king can find succor in the singer’s rapturously unworldly sounds. The structure of Ms. van Kampen’s script allows two men to share the crucial role of Farinelli: the actor Sam Crane for the scenes themselves and one of two British opera singers for the copious musical passages. (I saw the celebrated counter-tenor Iestyn Davies, but William Purefoy will be appearing at the bulk of the remaining performances.)

I’m not sure this is actually a great play: It relies to a large degree on the power of the well-placed verbal anachronism (a few choice expletives among them), and the ending depends upon one of those synoptic approaches to narrative — “what happened to [Farinelli], I hear you ask” is a representative line — that you often find right before the credits roll on a film. But as both Mr. Rylance’s long-time colleague and his wife, Ms. van Kampen knows perhaps better than anyone this actor’s gift for seeming to improvise in the moment material that has clearly been rehearsed.

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Ian Gelder, left, as James Whale and Will Austin as Clayton Boone in ‘‘Gods and Monsters’’ at the Southwark Playhouse.CreditAnnabel Vere

Our leading man is in prime form from the start, doing battle from within his bedchamber with a fishing rod and a goldfish bowl, and time and again an off-the-cuff bit of physical business or spoken stammer lift any sense we might have of a historical mustiness descending upon the evening. In visual terms, too, the staging is the most purely beautiful yet to be seen in this still-young London playhouse (the Wanamaker, part of Shakespeare’s Globe, opened in January 2014). The designer Jonathan Fensom’s sylvan backdrop gives the play the feel of an enchanted Shakespearean comedy even as the inexorable movement of the piece is toward that place where mortality and music are seen to merge.

It’s equally nice when a valued if lesser-known stage veteran gets his chance to step into the spotlight. Ian Gelder has lent exemplary support over time across a range of productions, from the 2006 West End revival of “The Sound of Music” to the Almeida Theater’s 2012 staging of “King Lear.” How pleasing it therefore is to find Mr. Gelder the center-stage occasion of “Gods and Monsters,” the play from the writer-director Russell Labey that is at the Southwark Playhouse through March 7.

You may recall the title from a 1998 movie of the same name, which starred Ian McKellen as the onetime Hollywood director James Whale, a gay Englishman abroad who remains best-known for directing several of the time-honored “Frankenstein” films. Mr. Gelder here inherits Mr. McKellen’s part of the lovesick Whale, a man beset by psychological demons who eventually committed suicide in 1957 at the age of 67. (The source for both this play and the film, for which Mr. McKellen was nominated for an Oscar, is Christopher Bram’s speculative 1995 novel, “Father of Frankenstein.”)

Whale’s life on this evidence was informed in varying degrees by public acclaim and private sadness, and Mr. Gelder inhabits that spectrum more movingly and with fewer florid flourishes than did Mr. McKellen. One finds both a reluctant film-world legend and an increasingly stroke-plagued individual ravaged by memories of a bygone love that Whale attempts to fashion afresh with the hunky, determinedly heterosexual young gardener, Clayton Boone (an appropriately muscle-bound Will Austin), whom the filmmaker invites into his home: The uneasy mating dance between the two men is deftly managed. Mr. Gelder makes you feel the ache of Whale’s assessment of himself as “that dirty old pansy” — a man cursed by self-knowledge played by an actor who knows how to seize the opportunity this production has given him to shine.

Zinnie Harris’s “How to Hold Your Breath,” on the Royal Court’s main stage through March 21, is tougher going than either of the plays that are granting Mr. Rylance and Mr. Gelder pride of place. At a recent performance, one could hear seats being upturned during the two-hour show — presented with no intermission — though mid-performance exits are hardly unknown at a playhouse that has always made a point of provoking its audience.

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Maxine Peake, right, and Michael Shaeffer star in Zinnie Harris’s ‘‘How to Hold Your Breath,’’ at the Royal Court.CreditManuel Harlan

In fact, I was gripped by Ms. Harris’s picaresque parable of a young woman, Dana, who in the opening scene is revealed to have slept with the devil (as embodied here in the attractive form of the actor Michael Shaeffer) before embarking upon a pan-European journey that speaks to Ms. Harris’s view of a disintegrating society and the people ensnared within it.

The play isn’t easy and doesn’t pretend to be, but it is at once more surprising and arresting than the concurrent Court entry, “Fireworks,” playing in the upstairs studio theater and telling of the effects of war on two Palestinian families. And, as if to complete the triptych begun by “Farinelli” and “Gods and Monsters,” it boasts a powerhouse leading performance, this time from Maxine Peake, recently seen onscreen as the onetime helper, Elaine, who became Stephen Hawking’s second wife in “The Theory of Everything.”

Consistently tested by a world in which her various support systems are taken away (a sister at one point, water at another), Dana is thrown back on her own wits, and Ms. Peake is riveting in her depiction of a survivalist spirit under persistent attack. Vicky Featherstone’s acute production ends with Dana drawing an audible intake of breath: There’s life, just possibly, in us all yet.

Farinelli and the King. Directed by John Dove. Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Through March 8.

Gods and Monsters. Directed by Russell Labey. Southwark Playhouse. Through March 7.

How to Hold Your Breath. Directed by Vicky Featherstone. Royal Court Jerwood Theater Downstairs. Through March 21.